America's opinion leader historians on behalf of success

A complex communication mosaic contributed to Americans' impelling motives to be successful. Some particularly credible “bits” of information in that mosaic came at crucial times from several twentieth‐century historians whose “literature of actuality” reinforced our faith in ways of achievement practiced earlier on the frontier and by our founding fathers. As they provided guidance to corroborate what was read and heard in popular culture, those historians are among America's most subtle but influential opinion leaders.     

Using institutional theory and dynamic simulation to understand complex e-Government phenomena

Governments around the world have developed e-Government programs expecting to obtain important benefits such as improved efficiency or greater transparency. However, many e-Government projects fail to deliver their promises in terms of specific outcomes. Some of such failures are the result of a lack of understanding about the relationships among technologies, information use, organizational factors, institutional arrangements, and socio-economic contexts involved in the selection, implementation, and use of information and communication technologies (ICT), producing mismatches and unintended consequences. This paper proposes the use of institutional theory and dynamic simulation, particularly system dynamics, as an integrated and comprehensive approach to understand e-Government phenomena. Combining a sound theory and a sophisticated analytical technique will help to improve our understanding about ICT in government settings. The paper draws on the case of the e-Mexico program, particularly on the strategy to create web-based content portals for citizens in the areas of education, health, economy, and government. Using the same technological infrastructure and under the leadership of the same Federal Ministry, four different networks of government and non-government organizations engaged in the creation of internet portals and their content. The results provide evidence to demonstrate important bidirectional relationships between formal processes (institutions), agency networks (organizational forms), and the resulting characteristics of the four thematic portals (enacted technology).     

History education in comprehensive schools: using school-level data to interpret national patterns

This paper reports the findings from two large-scale national online surveys carried out in 2009 and 2010, which explored the state of history teaching in English secondary schools. Large variation in provision was identified within comprehensive schools in response to national policy decisions and initiatives. Using the data from the surveys and school-level data that are publicly available, this study examines situated factors, particularly the nature of the school intake, the numbers of pupils with special educational needs and the socio-economic status of the area surrounding the school, and the impact these have on the provision of history education. The findings show that there is a growing divide between those students that have access to the ‘powerful knowledge' provided by subjects like history, and those that do not.     

What is policy? 21 years later: reflections on the possibilities of policy research

This paper is a reflection on What is policy? Texts, Trajectories and Tool Boxes, which was first published in 1993, in Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education. It looks back to what the 1993 paper was trying to do and at some of the developments of the ideas first sketched there in my later work, in particular in the book How Schools Do Policy (2012). It also considers the continuing tensions between domination and agency, discourse and text, in policy research and the misuse of the concept of discourse in some policy analysis work.     

教师课程创生的角色践行意义及其实现

教师课程创生不仅能缩短"自我与他者"规范和期望的角色距离,而且能改造作为"日常教学生活"直接延伸的固有"角色习性"。课程创生是实现教师角色转变和践行的重要通道,可通过实践反思提升角色自觉意识、师生互动引发角色认同、创设能使社团共构创生愿景。     

论我国被选举权资格条件的限制及其设定

通过对世界各国被选举权资格限制的分析,可以借鉴一些国家的做法,对被选举权的资格条件做出一些合理的限制,对各级人大代表和由选举产生的国家机关领导人员的资格条件进行一些具体规定是符合宪法和法律精神的,有其合理性且十分必要。     

课程创生:学前教育课程改革的必然选择

学前教育课程创生是指幼儿园教师根据一定的价值取向或幼儿的兴趣需要,优化整合幼儿园内外资源,在课程的开发、实施、评价过程中,通过不断的反思批判,主动地、创造性地建构适合幼儿全面、和谐而又富有个性发展的课程的过程,实践性、生成性、建构性、反思性、动态性、开放性是其主要特征;学前教育课程创生具有巨大的现当代价值。     

试论行政相对人行政奖励权利的法律保护

行政奖励作为一种与行政命令等硬性行政手段相对的软性行政手段,被广泛的用于政府治理,在带来较好行政效益的同时,也暴露出了不少问题,其中行政相对人行政奖励权利得不到有效法律保护是一大问题,本文试从行政奖励的权源——设定权,谈如何使行政相对人行政奖励的权利得到有效法律保护。     

The National Disability Insurance Scheme and access to education: progressive or coercive policy discourse?

This paper explores the experiences of a small group of families in Australia in relation to recent reform to disability policy by way of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). Framed in critical disability perspectives of policy implementation research, the paper focuses on the extent to which the scheme articulates inclusive opportunities for children and young people with disabilities, particularly in relation to facilitating access to education. Interview data that illustrate families' expectations of the scheme and latter-day experiences, coercions and negotiations highlight the tensions that exist for scheme participants who draw on its provision to support their education. These first- and second-order policy effects indicate a welcome change to disability support in Australia, though the extent to which the scheme can advance inclusion for people with disabilities is uncertain, given the distance rendered between the policy and its participants and other service systems. The paper concludes with a theoretical discussion based on the analysis of how the NDIS is framed to interrelate with scheme participants and education and how it might be reframed for better outcomes.     

The enactment of the policy initiative for critical thinking in Singapore schools

This article examines the enactment of the policy initiative to promote critical thinking in Singapore schools from the perspectives of educators in Singapore. It is argued that teachers in Singapore are not passive recipients or mere implementers of top-down policy decisions. Rather, they enact the policy initiative by making sense of, negotiating, influencing and capitalising on their unique conditions to achieve their goals and juggle multiple demands. Three research findings are discussed in this article. First, the teachers mediate the policy process through their interpretations of critical thinking and cognisance of the socio-cultural challenges they face. Secondly, they recontextualise the policy initiative by adopting a skills-focused conception of critical thinking in the form of the infusion cum discipline-specific approach. Thirdly, they apply correlative thinking by combining didactic teaching with active student participation in their dual desire to foster critical thinking and prepare their students for the high-stakes exam. This study extends the existing research on policy enactment by identifying and illustrating manifestations of active appropriation in an Asian context.